Got my first muzzleloader when I was around fifteen in 1969. It was a Navy Arms .45 percussion Kentucky Rifle. I had to find a book to learn how to shoot it. The shop where I bought it sold powder by the pound in brown paper bags. I got a mold and plummers lead and bought pillow ticking and I was off. A couple years later I got a .58 Zouave replica. Next was a 1858 .44 Remington revolver replica and a .44 1860 Army and years later a Dixie Brown Bess. I soon got a Charleville Pistol replica. I also have a .50 hand built mountain rifle and a Thompson Center .58 Big Boar and a .50 Thompson Center flintlock Hawken...I have been rendezvousing for around thirty years...Actually my first ML was a length of bamboo that had some tape and wire wrapped around it. It had a touch hole I drilled in it and was loaded with flash powder from firecrackers, newspaper wads, gravel, more paper and was primed with a firecracker fuse stuck through the touch hole...It worked until it blew up. I wasn't injured but decided a BB rifle would be better. I think I was around ten...So yep, I DO like to shoot smokepoles!